Belfast, UK and Moscow, Russia - 11 Oct 2004 -- OptimaNumerics, leader in high performance technical and scientific computing software, has today cemented an important partnership with the Russian Joint Supercomputer Center (JSCC) in Moscow. The new deal will see OptimaNumerics provide its high performance numerical software to JSCC and collaboration on high performance computational techniques research. OptimaNumerics is a Qubis Ltd backed company.

The supercomputer with OptimaNumerics Libraries at JSCC is the fastest PowerPC 970 supercomputer in the world, with 168 CPUs it is the second fastest supercomputer in Russia.

Dr Oleg Aladyshev, Deputy Director of JSCC, explains, "OptimaNumerics Libraries enable us to achieve higher performance level than with other libraries, on our new massively parallel supercomputer the IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 with PowerPC 970 processors. JSCC decided to install this new supercomputer to meet growing processing requirements of our 600 users. We are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration with OptimaNumerics on high performance computational techniques research." The Russian Joint Supercomputer Center employs 100 staff in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekatrinburg. It was established in 1996 as a state-funded national high-performance computing center to provide resources for research projects of complex, data-intensive computational problems.

"The eServer BladeCenter JS20 is growing as the solution of choice for 64-bit high performance, compute intensive applications in areas such as life sciences and university research" said David Olechovsky, IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 product manager. "OptimaNumerics has created a suite of numerical software components that when combined with the JS20 is an attractive solution for scientific and technical computing customers."

Dr Kenneth Tan, the Chief Executive Officer of OptimaNumerics said, "We are delighted to have JSCC as a partner, and to provide the high performance computational tools. OptimaNumerics Libraries will enable JSCC to handle a much larger number of computational jobs by completing each computational job faster, which in turn maximizes use of JSCC's hardware investments. The portable and flexible technologies behind OptimaNumerics Libraries provide JSCC with a reliable solution regardless of which supercomputer they choose in the future."

For more information, contact:
sales@OptimaNumerics.com, or visit http://www.OptimaNumerics.com

Notes:

OptimaNumerics Libraries for IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 provide high performance versions of LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, SPRNG and PLFG libraries.

OptimaNumerics Libraries for IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 with PowerPC970 processor build on OptimaNumerics' innovative technologies that have consistently delivered superior performance and portability across a wide range of platforms. Other platforms supported include the Intel Xeon, Xeon EM64T and Itanium processor families, the AMD Opteron, IBM POWER, HP PA-RISC, HP Alpha and Sun UltraSPARC architectures.